3, 2, 1 Lets Jam!

Posting in the forums never goes well, anyways lets have a chat.

So, theres plenty armchair game designers in the forums. Its safe to say that no one from square or the dev team reads these but I know you all will so this is just for us!

This might not be super popular to say but I think tanks should have a good degree of similarity, I say this because healers need it too, as do dps. When I say similar I mean, when you open your tank abilities you should be able to preform you core duties the same as any other tank. All tanks need a basic combo, all tanks need an AOE combo, all tanks need cooldowns. I think its here that we should understand similarities are necessary so with regards to that lets analyze our tanks from some critical points these in my mind break down into
-lvl15(start of instanced dungeons)
-lvl50
-lvl60
-lvl70
-lvl80(all the previous level caps)

At level 15 as a tank I should 100% have the following things without having to consider role actions; my first 2 combo hits, my stance, my ranged pull, my aoe, an offensive cd and a defensive cd.
With all of these every tank has the same base tools allowing them to do their job and these are just foundational stuff that help cement how to tank.

At lvl 50 as a tank I should now have; access to all my personal defensive cooldowns(in my mind each tank should have about 3 long cooldowns of which one is rampart and 2 are mitigation with class flavor), I should have my super cooldown, finalized basic AOE+single target combo and Ideally the first at minimum of my job guage abilities.

At lvl60, we shoukd have the gap closer and the start of a true indiviual resource usage(this is your gnashing fang combo or holy spirt type stuff)

At lvl70, we should have our party protection and co-tank protection abilities

At 80, we get our resource related cooldowns

I think my only hard line points are the similarity at 15 and 50 since that is the point where your job should feel "complete" but can be built off of, and I do think all the points ive said should be true when 80 is reached currently. Of course I have ideas I would like to see but bringing the tanks in line with one another first is crucial and especially early on some tanks feel like they are lacking in certain areas. Feel free to add to this thread what you want. Ill probably add from time to time some brainstormed stuff but I wanted to see how people interpret this, specifically the forums.

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Originally Posted by ZaqueXIII

This might not be super popular to say but I think tanks should have a good degree of similarity, I say this because healers need it too, as do dps. When I say similar I mean, when you open your tank abilities you should be able to preform you core duties the same as any other tank. All tanks need a basic combo, all tanks need an AOE combo, all tanks need cooldowns.

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The reason it's not a popular opinion is because IT IS THE BARE BASIC MINIMUM!!! We want MORE than the BARE BASIC MINIMUM!

Job balance doesn't matter before max level. The biggest reason for this is that there's so much variability in gear while you're still levelling. Getting a beneficial dungeon drop can produce large changes in your performance. The other, perhaps more salient point is that most people either don't care about how well you optimise for Sastasha Normal, or they lack the knowledge to assess this.

The main goals of the levelling process should be to:
1) Progressively introduce you to the mechanics of the job
2) Allow you to form a decision (hopefully early) about whether it clicks with you or not

Levelling is the tutorial. Core steps in your rotation should be introduced early so that they become second nature. There's no point introducing the "3" in 1-2-3 at level 70+. I know that the dev team likes to introduce these in late as the "new ability" for an expansion, but this fools nobody. (What, you aren't excited to see Malefic 19?) No, adding another combo step that should have been there all along doesn't absolve you from having to come up with a few unique abilities every two years. Hire more than four people to manage 17 jobs, yeah? Oh, you squandered the money from this golden egg into your other (less worthwhile) projects? Thanks.

Likewise, shorter recast abilities should be introduced before longer recast ones. Abilities like Sheltron and even TBN should be introduced before abilities like Rampart and Vengeance, even if only in a self-only form. Knowing that a cooldown will be back up again in a mere 20 seconds time makes you less afraid to press it. It also gives your tanks more agency. Hey, I can do something to stop myself from dying at this part! That's huge.

It's important for tanks to highlight playstyle differences early. If you wait too long to introduce in each job's unique resource system, the player is forced to grind through an unnecessary amount of content to realise that PLD/GNB's current "resource" systems are less interesting than watching paint dry and the real gameplay is a paint-by-numbers rotation. But, hey, spreadsheets might be your thing, I'm not one to judge (I am judging you).

Also, why would anyone want to wait 60+ levels to use a gap closer? I do understand the need for progression (save your big offensive cooldowns and invulns for the very end). Even still nobody wants to slow walk through the first dungeon that they queue for, just because they haven't earned the right to jump from pack to pack by wading through hours of story monologues. Bring out the mobility tools and unique fun stuff for each job early, and add in the big damage moves with long cooldowns as the icing on the cake at the very end of the levelling experience.

If you want to see how to streamline levelling, just look at Warcraft's pre-Shadowlands patch designs. They've pretty much got it down to a science.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

*snip*

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This speaks to me on a spiritual level...I like spreadsheets though.

I have to agree that the flavors being added in earlier than later, would make things a lot better. Gap closers when dps get them(pre 50 maybe a full aoe rotation by 50 wouldnt hurt either)

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Job balance doesn't matter before max level...


...Also, why would anyone want to wait 60+ levels to use a gap closer?...

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I agree job balance shouldn't matter until max level many of these thresholds have been MAX level at some point. So then what are we balancing for? lvl99 ok, then why do we care if they are balanced now? Each job should feel like it is complete at any point that would be considered MAX level, Gap closers are a luxury that no one cared had in ARR and only the dark knight had in Heavensward, now come Shadowbringers it has been decided that this is a mandatory tank ability but unlike some other mandatory tank abilities and paladin doesn't get theirs until 70+ so I guess to more directly address your question paladins would for the sake of retroactive balance.

The numerical value of "Max Level" is irrelevant. Warcraft just squished their level 120 characters down to level 50. You can do this as much as you like. The only reason why games historically pushed the numbers upward is to give players a sense of 'progression' as they go from one expansion to the next. The trade off is that the levelling process looks progressively more intimidating to new players.

What matters is that when you're done with the 'tutorial', jobs are able to perform their role on an equal footing. Note that this doesn't mean identical. It also doesn't mean that you have to do all things equally well.

All tanks need positioning tools. A ranged pull action is one of these. Gap closers are another. Not every gap closer needs to be Plunge. A draw in effect that pulls a mob towards you is a gap closer. A jump to target location (Shukuchi) is a gap closer. A move that propels you forward (or even backward - Elusive Jump) a fixed distance is a gap closer. Mob movement is such an intrinsic part of tanking that movement tools should be introduced early (much earlier than your average dps job, in fact). The reason why this game was so slow to introduce them is because the game developers don't seem to have the slightest clue on what makes for interesting tanking. That's why our raid content is the functional equivalent of a rail shooter, where the bosses position themselves and occasionally perform a five minute tankbuster cast to force you invuln-swap so that your co-tank doesn't die of boredom. (I know that the main reason for this lack of tank agency is because mobs can't execute actions and move at the same time, but that's a 1.x problem that they should sat down and sorted out sometime over the past seven years or so).

I guess in all fairness based on your point, my view is that the 'tutorial' should end at 50 even though we currently are at 80. Beyond that, although my initial argument was rather cut and paste with generic abilities I think that even those abilities can be manipulated based on job identity. In fact, your mentioning of a draw in effect as a means of gap closer is pretty enlightening, to be honest, back when I started playing around the time of through the maelstrom I thought that Holmgang's purpose was to pull enemies to you and used it as such. It's something that warriors and marauders in the game use constantly of drawing in and chaining opponents and yet it has not been implemented as a player ability. Food for thought if naught else, thanks for the contribution!

I actually wish the all of the traits and weaponskill/spells/abilities that the devs got rid of in both Stormblood and Shadowbringers came back because the traits actually felt like they served a purpose, which was balancing, as ironic and funny as that sounds... and the tutorial should end at level 50 where we just get nothing but a ton of traits which only serve to balance various points of end game content that expansions of any MMORPG forgets even existed... only to be suddenly remember that it exists still, despite people reminding them that said content has always existed...

Heh, it'd be cool if they'd allowed Holmgang's original bind effect to work on all bosses. And the 2.1 chain and draw towards effect too. I got so excited being able to bind the Flan boss in Wanderer's Palace, only to never get to really use it much ever again for that purpose after that Q_Q

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Originally Posted by ZaqueXIII

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The reason why Holmgang's draw in effect was removed was because mobs have to be stationary in order to activate abilities. The draw-in effect could be used to forcibly reposition a mob by using Holmgang and then jumping away from the mob. This forced mob movement interrupts cast abilities, including ones that were intended to be uninterruptable. A historic but niche example of this was using Holmgang to interrupt Dreadwash on Leviathan Ex. No other action in the game can.

This limitation is also the reason why a lot of the fight designs changed towards a linear timeline where boss movement is fairly strictly controlled by the game designers. Prior to Stormblood, you apparently could prevent ability activation and phase transitions by simply spinning the boss very quickly. I can appreciate that they needed to quickly fix a game-breaking bug. But it seems to me that they've had about three years since to address this. Mobs still stutterstep even when using 'instant' abilities. It's astounding how clunky mob movement in this game is even compared to circa 2004 MMOs. Warcraft is a hundred times more fluid, and it feels like you're actually tanking. This should be their number one priority to fix, because it really takes the joy out of tanking.

They've had seven years since 1.x. If they can't fix it by next expansion, I don't have faith that they ever will.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Mobs still stutterstep even when using 'instant' abilities. It's astounding how clunky mob movement in this game is even compared to circa 2004 MMOs. Warcraft is a hundred times more fluid, and it feels like you're actually tanking. This should be their number one priority to fix, because it really takes the joy out of tanking.

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Gunbreaker only made this issue even more glaring, there's nothing worse than being in your Gnashing combo and having to move a boss or add that moves like someone is kicking a heavy trashcan towards you.


You eventually get used to it but that's exactly the issue, you have to get used to the boss stuttering like a broken engine so you don't accidently mess up your combo while performing one of the most basic tank functions.

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Originally Posted by DRKoftheAzure

I actually wish the all of the traits and weaponskill/spells/abilities that the devs got rid of in both Stormblood and Shadowbringers came back because the traits actually felt like they served a purpose, which was balancing, as ironic and funny as that sounds... and the tutorial should end at level 50 where we just get nothing but a ton of traits which only serve to balance various points of end game content that expansions of any MMORPG forgets even existed... only to be suddenly remember that it exists still, despite people reminding them that said content has always existed...

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Bold of you to claim those traits existed for balancing when this is the first expansion where tanks are actually balanced, instead of 'Take Warrior for every fight ever.'

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Originally Posted by Gruntler

Bold of you to claim those traits existed for balancing when this is the first expansion where tanks are actually balanced, instead of 'Take Warrior for every fight ever.'

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TL;DR of what I'm going to say is; I didn't say it was perfect or good, but good enough to expand upon (and is better than Fire IV spam design) and make later level ups feel more special rather than empty experience that I wish for a level squish...



Long version:

In ARR, it was probably so bad that people ran double WAR because PLD didn't really do a lot even with specific cross-class skills like Cure, and Stoneskin and Protect on PLD was all that PLD was ever good for (assuming the player in question got WHM to the levels need to unlock those skill for PLD) outside of the bare minimum which I like to call it as "the PLD curse of bare minimum"

Though WAR was basically diet DRK before DRK was even introduced back in ARR, and the devs probably realized this which is why DRK had Cross-Class skills that drew from WAR abilities over DRG abilities(though I wished jobs had access to more than 2 sets of classes for cross-class abilities)

Stormblood was the second expansion that started to push for small amounts of homogenization, which was too bad but it could have been done a lot better... Then Shadowbringers went overboard and lost a lot of job/class identity in the process in the name of balance...

I think Shadowbringers shafted DRK so hard in the name of balance that I think it's more unbalanced than WAR just because of how poorly designed it's abilities are compared to the other 3 tanks because the other 3 do what DRK does but so much better and DRK only still exists in FF14 because FF legacy, but Fell Cleave spam and Demi-Bahamut is not well designed for the more slow and stylish GCD that a lot of classes have, and are so boring to look at that I would rather go play something else that doesn't have either of those design choices, and DRK has a lot design problems...

Granted combos have their own balancing problem, mostly because of phase transitions (with add phases) and enrage timers, which BOTH need to be done away with for normal modes... You can still have them for the Hard(assuming they bring this back)/Extreme/Savage/Ultimate fights.

It also doesn't help that the devs insist every tank needs a Fire IV spam on a cooldown starting with PLD and then WAR followed shortly after in Stormblood, which then DRK got as well because WARs loved Fell Cleave spam so much... which by the way; the only way you can make that type of spam work is if you happen to be caster DPS OR BRD OR you have at least 2 spells that serve a different purposes like PLD.

It also doesn't help that PLD and GNB AoE combos seem to look a lot better compared to DRK and WAR AoE combos, and the GNB and PLD AoE combos also do more damage than the DRK and WAR AoE combos in total, and that's probably because of the spam burst that WAR and DRK have, which shouldn't make sense because PLD has the exact same burst in spell form, yet PLD does more damage than WAR and DRK, and GNB does more damage than PLD and because PLD does more damage than DRK and WAR GNB is already best by default due to how much damage it does with at least 1 situational class cooldown(Heart of Light only good for mitigating magic damage) whereas DRK has 3 situational class cooldowns at best and 4 at worst(Dark Mind/Missionary being only good for mitigating magic damage, Living Dead due to how bad its effects are, and The Blackest Night for how much MP it costs that you might as well dump that MP on Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow).

You can have balance on the DPS output and it has to be minuscule enough to not matter unless you have people complaining about how boring looking or poorly designed certain abilities(or BOTH at the same time like Living Shadow despite it being too flashy for a DoT that also does 3 AoEs where you are better off giving Abyssal Drain /Carve and Spit 2 charges, PLD Goring Blade is a DoT that's also flashy enough, lasts just as long but doesn't do as much damage unless you're trying to maintain it which will do more damage than Living Shadow in single target in the long term) where you might as well have a burst combo like RDM or GNB as that seems to be well designed, which is the path PLD seems to be going granted you would need to make each burst combo feel VERY different outside of numbers by adding an additional effect of some kind.

End game currently has 4 level brackets being 50, 60, 70, and 80 but what is the point of half of the end game content if it's going to be boring because half of your skills are locked behind the other half the end game content(unless you play healers then you probably wouldn't notice the difference between a level 50 and 80 endgame raid outside of "what happened to half of my- oh right level sync") which then becomes pointless to begin with because you can into older content unsynced once you hit current level cap and figure out how much of the bosses mechanics are still BS because you can't solo the entire fight.

And now for some questions that I want to ask that I also want to give my thoughts and opinion on

Do we need a level squish?

Do we need a basically the full end game toolkit available as early as level 50, or do we need it spread out over the course of each expansion until a level squish needs to happen to fix the balancing problems that were introduced going into Stormblood that was magnified in Shadowbringers?

Do all classes/jobs need to look and feel different within a specific role, or do they just need the bare minimum?

In regards to level squish; NO!

In regards to full end game toolkit; at least level 50, level 60 at most.

In regards classes/jobs feeling different within the role they are given; YES! YES! A THOUSAND TIMES YES! They need to feel different enough to fill the role while providing something that fits their class/job identity, whether it be through their DPS rotation, defensive cooldowns, or both, and if they are going to have a Fire IV spam AT LEAST CHANGE THE ANIMATION PAST THE FIRST USE!

In ARR, players ran double PLD in 2.0 and PLD/WAR from 2.1 onwards. A lot of the perceptions about WAR being 'squishier' persisted despite the rework in 2.1, so teams often preferred to use a PLD MT despite the fact that WAR had a more powerful offensive and defensive toolkit after the revision. After Final Coil, when teams were playing around with optimising fights and 7 player runs, people actually found that the reverse was better (i.e. WAR MT/PLD OT).

One of the reasons why ARR worked was because the tanks didn't actually need to be 'balanced'. You had two tank jobs. You were required to take one of each, after they introduced the limit break penalty for doubling up on jobs in 2.1. They just needed to be different. And they were very different. PLD was your vanilla MMO tank, and WAR got all of the creative mechanics. HP boosts? Sure, sounds good. Offensive and defensive debuffs? Self-healing and lifesteal? Why not. But none of this was done with a view to adding more tank jobs in future expansions. This same dynamic existed with WHM's (vanilla) and SCH's (variety) designs as well, which is why WAR/SCH spent the next two expansions being mandatory picks. It also mean that when a third tank and healer were added in Heavensward, there wasn't that much room for them to differentiate themselves (AST's Balance aside, which was a questionable design decision).

Stormblood hit DRK a lot harder than Shadowbringers did. The biggest reason for this was the role actions system, which is probably the single dumbest design decision that they made. It's one thing to standardise abilities. It's another thing to take a job's unique flavour, remove it, and then donate the actions back to everyone else. Imagine the uproar that would have occurred if, instead of introducing Holy Spirit and Bloodspiller, they had just removed Fell Cleave and reintroduced it as a role action, with a less impactful animation. They also just didn't understand the impact that they were going to have on DRK's resource system with the abilities that they ripped out, which is the end result of having four devs designing 15 jobs. I think the loss of the speed boost on Blood Weapon was a big step backwards in Shadowbringers, but aside from that, most of DRK's problems are a legacy of Stormblood's missteps.

It does make sense to balance jobs with less burst such that they do more damage. Burst is less punishing than having to maintain continuous uptime. I don't think you can balance dps against other parameters (mitigation, utility, etc.) I do think that counter-attack based abilities should come back (Heavensward Reprisal, Shield Swipe, etc.) Vengeance still has it's damage effect. This is one of the few ways that you can make tanking feel different from melee dps.

I don't think that tanks all need to be able to do the exact same set of tasks the same way. But if you're going to make them unique, it has to be in a way that isn't one-sided. Is it okay to be the least mobile tank? Sure, as long as you get to excel somewhere else.

The developers need to utilize Traits more. A lot more.

People think that anything below maximum level is pointless but we spend a lot of time below maximum level so balancing the lower levels matters. Especially for tanks. Doing anything on Dark Knight below level 70 is a miserable affair.

Dark Knight gets it's primary defensive ability, The Blackest Night, at level 70.

They could give it you sooner but have a Trait at level 70 that reduces the cool down and increases the damage shield.

They get their AoE combo ability, Stalwart Soul, at level 72. They could instead have a Trait at level 72 that increases it's potency and restores Mana.

Every expansion they remove old abilities to make room for new abilities so FF14 is just going to more and more top heavy, meaning this is going to get worse and worse.

I agree. This is a very sensible suggestion.

There is a lore reason why TBN is given to you after completing the level 70 quest. Even still, they could just as easily give you a 15% self-only shield at level 10, call it something else using their standard naming convention ("Edge of Black Bubble of Darkness") and then upgrade it to "The Blackest Night" at 70. You can see that the dev team is trying to do this to an extent with some abilities (Inner Beast -> Fell Cleave), but their entire four person dev team is probably allocated to designing new dps jobs for the next two expansions, such that there will be a steady supply of new players to buy Mogstation glamours in the future. So I'm not holding my breath for any sort of intelligent job restructuring.

There are plenty of other things that they should implement but haven't. You should be able to apply glamours to change action animations, rather than throwing away animations that were used in defunct animations or trying to make them into poses. I'm sure there are plenty of DRKs who would have liked to use Shadowskin's animation for Rampart or even use HW's Delirium animation in place of Souleater. I'm sure that crafters would love to sell you the chance to change around your Shadow/Egi/Faerie to a more cosmetically appealing form. Talent trees are likewise another way to maintain older abilities in the game while preventing button bloat. None of these are original ideas, by the way. You just need to look at what your competition is doing better than you and steal it.

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I agree. This is a very sensible suggestion.

There is a lore reason why TBN is given to you after completing the level 70 quest. Even still, they could just as easily give you a 15% self-only shield at level 10, call it something else using their standard naming convention ("Edge of Black Bubble of Darkness") and then upgrade it to "The Blackest Night" at 70. You can see that the dev team is trying to do this to an extent with some abilities (Inner Beast -> Fell Cleave), but their entire four person dev team is probably allocated to designing new dps jobs for the next two expansions, such that there will be a steady supply of new players to buy Mogstation glamours in the future. So I'm not holding my breath for any sort of intelligent job restructuring.

There are plenty of other things that they should implement but haven't. You should be able to apply glamours to change action animations, rather than throwing away animations that were used in defunct animations or trying to make them into poses. I'm sure there are plenty of DRKs who would have liked to use Shadowskin's animation for Rampart or even use HW's Delirium animation in place of Souleater. I'm sure that crafters would love to sell you the chance to change around your Shadow/Egi/Faerie to a more cosmetically appealing form. Talent trees are likewise another way to maintain older abilities in the game while preventing button bloat. None of these are original ideas, by the way. You just need to look at what your competition is doing better than you and steal it.

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I would love to get the Shadowskin animation back, for sure, and id rather have SE use the Power Slash animation and sound, ah well missed oppurtunities on SE part. They also have to totally rename skills like Lancers Charge, but keep the same icon, while everyone just calls it B4B, etc. Such a waste, really just to arbitrarily give tanks more than 2 necessary "role actions" because they dont want to give them stuff like bloodbath that they originally had because "balance".

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Originally Posted by Lyth

I agree. This is a very sensible suggestion.

call it something else using their standard naming convention ("Edge of Black Bubble of Darkness") .

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hahah

how about "The Greyest Night" xD

i feel like generally the gutting of the trait system caused huge issues with balance and accessibility to abilities all the way across all classes reducing the amount of flexibility and early access to weaker variants of the same abilities to players.
HW DRK had a lot going for it, i think its going to feel pretty insulting when they give those animations back as "new abilities" :/ this expansion feels like it has more button bloat then Stormblood.

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Originally Posted by Renkei

hahah

how about "The Greyest Night" xD

i feel like generally the gutting of the trait system caused huge issues with balance and accessibility to abilities all the way across all classes reducing the amount of flexibility and early access to weaker variants of the same abilities to players.
HW DRK had a lot going for it, i think its going to feel pretty insulting when they give those animations back as "new abilities" :/ this expansion feels like it has more button bloat then Stormblood.

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Name it Dark Avenger

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Originally Posted by Lyth

Job balance doesn't matter before max level.

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SQEX cares about having them balanced at 70 for the Ultimates

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Originally Posted by ItMe

SQEX cares about having them balanced at 70 for the Ultimates

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The SCH patchnotes beg to differ.